The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Film, Sci Fi | ≅ 8 Comments
You know George Lucas’ classic, The Empire Strikes Back. Now roll it back a good 60 years and imagine the silent version. It works unexpectedly well. H/T to @wesalwan. And don’t miss many landmark silent films in our collection of Free Movies Online. Chaplin, early Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, the first sci-fi and western films – [...]
≡ Category: Film, History, Music | ≅ 1 Comment
What you’re watching is the trailer for the documentary Alice Dancing Under the Gallows by Nick Reed, to be released later this year. At 107, Alice Herz-Sommer is the oldest Holocaust survivor. Her story is both touching and inspiring. Alice was born in Prague – then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – in 1903. She [...]
≡ Category: Media, Philosophy | ≅ 2 Comments
Back in 1948, Britain was making another difficult transition, moving from the trauma of World War II to the chill of the Cold War. Hoping to give radio listeners some clarity on contemporary affairs, the BBC began airing an annual series of lectures — the Reith Lectures — that featured leading thinkers of the day. [...]
≡ Category: History, Literature | ≅ Leave a Comment
Hot on the heels of Independence Day, here’s a chance to listen to one of America’s best writers declaring his own form of Independence — a freedom from some of the more troubling assumptions embedded in the English language. Starting with a dry, mild questioning of phrases like “black as night,” “black-hearted,” and “black as [...]
≡ Category: History, Technology | ≅ 1 Comment
The world’s first video game, OXO, was invented in 1952. As the title suggests, it was simple tic-tac-toe, and you could only play it on the EDSAC computer at the University of Cambridge. (Watch it in action here.) The fun didn’t really get started until the late 1960′s, when Robert Baer, Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch developed [...]
≡ Category: Harvard, History, Literature, Philosophy | ≅ 3 Comments
During his days as Harvard’s influential president, Charles W. Eliot made a frequent assertion: If you were to spend just 15 minutes a day reading the right books, a quantity that could fit on a five foot shelf, you could give yourself a proper liberal education. The publisher P. F. Collier and Son loved the idea and asked [...]
≡ Category: Art, Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
In 1945 Alfred Hitchcock had to explain one of Hollywood’s unwritten rules to Salvador Dali: No, you can’t pour live ants all over Ingrid Bergman! Hitchcock had approached Dali for help with a dream sequence in his upcoming thriller, Spellbound, starring Bergman and Gregory Peck. He was unhappy with the fuzziness of Hollywood dream sequences. “I [...]
≡ Category: Life, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
The Texas-based artist and videographer Jeremiah Warren mounted a wide angle lens camera on some fireworks to give us the fireworks’ angle on their own brief, bright trajectory. Not surprisingly, the very cool two-minute video — equal parts Strangelove, Pynchon, and vertigo — went viral over the weekend. For more information about Warren’s camera set-up, check [...]
≡ Category: Astronomy, History, Science, Television, Video - Science | ≅ 3 Comments
After 30 years and 134 flights, America’s space shuttle program draws to a close. And it feels pitch perfect to wind things down with a documentary narrated by William Shatner. Of course, you know him as Captain Kirk from Star Trek, the iconic sci-fi TV show that ran from 1966 to 1969, smack in the [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Philosophy, Religion | ≅ 3 Comments
Comedian Stephen Fry has the classic British intellectual voice, much like philosopher Bryan McGee. It turns out that he knows something about philosophy, and this clip is a shortened version of a longer video called “The Importance of Unbelief.” A more gentle version of George Carlin, Fry’s views appear heartfelt while partaking of serious irony. He [...]
Get updates as soon as they go live, via RSS feed, email and now Twitter!
Get the latest from our Twitter Stream.
Why can't we be friends?
Got a link we should post? Send it our way!
©2006-2012 Open Culture. All rights reserved.
